Students in a Florida school district will be reading only excerpts from William Shakespeare's plays for class rather than the full texts under redesigned curriculum guides developed, in part, to take into consideration the state's new law that restricts classroom materials whose content can be deemed sexual, the AP reports. The changes to the Hillsborough County Public Schools' curriculum guides were made with Florida's new legislation limiting classroom materials that "contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct" in mind. Other reasons included revised state standards and an effort to get students to read a wide variety of books for new state exams, the school district said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. Several Shakespeare plays use suggestive puns and innuendo, and it is implied that the protagonists have had premarital sex in Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare's books will be available for checkout at media centers at schools, said the district, which covers the Tampa area. "First and foremost, we have not excluded Shakespeare from our high school curriculum. Students will still have the physical books to read excerpts in class," the statement said. "Curriculum guides are continually reviewed and refined throughout the year to align with state standards and current law." The decision in Tampa is the latest fallout from laws passed by Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature and championed by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis over the past two years. Underscoring the confusion over what is allowed in schools, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz on Tuesday put Romeo and Juliet on his list of books he is recommending that students read in August.
Meanwhile, in Lake County, outside Orlando, the school district reversed a decision, made in response to the "Don't Say Gay" legislation, to restrict access to a popular children's book about a male penguin couple hatching a chick. The School Board of Lake County and Florida education officials last week asked a federal judge to toss out a First Amendment lawsuit that students and the authors of And Tango Makes Three filed in June. Their complaint challenged the restrictions and Florida's new laws. The lawsuit is moot because age restrictions on the book were lifted following a Florida Department of Education memo that said the new law applied only to classroom instruction and not school libraries, according to motions filed Friday by Florida education officials and school board members.
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